Futurama's Billy West Breaks Down His Most Famous Character Voices | Vanity Fair

hi vanity fair i'm billy west you might recognize me as both ren and stimpy hey lynn will you button me shut up you fool yes i shall kill you or fry oh man did everything just taste purple for a second and farnsworth on futurama good news everyone well i don't want to live on this planet anymore that's exactly the job i've always wanted nobody is as funny or as smart as you uh i'm nice i've got a great dog i can eat a ton of cotton candy without getting sick uh you were expecting maybe the easter bunny oh joy hey red it's commander hawk and stimpy happy happy happy enjoy joy joy my favorite live action drama it's so funny when john chris felicity called me to do ren and stimpy he said hey i want you to do voices on the cartoon here i said sure wonderful and um and i looked at the drawings and i couldn't figure out what they were you know were they microbes or were they mosquitoes but it was like very dolly ask i used larry fine from the three stooges as a template for stimpy hey mo i peed on my shoe so i amped them up into sort of like the cartoon universe you know it's like hey when you button me come on ren i need your help oh please he sent in my stimpy audition because he changed mine he wanted to do the wren character and i said fine i don't give a fat frogs behind who does what i had a job i was grateful we started doing stuff and uh he got himself fired um unceremoniously so then they were the execs were going like wait a minute wasn't billy supposed to do both voices and you know they sent me some stuff and i read it and i sent it in and they said okay we'll work with you you know dear friend it's me it's me you are my favorite tv star the voices to me sound like what they look like happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy happy happy day i was uh wondering well if you want to um [Music] go to the fair stupid jim jenkins he was really creative and he created this slew of characters and the character doug i guess was based on him when he was a little kid you know he was sensitive had crushes on girls but he didn't even know how to approach them and he was respectful of everybody he was well a painfully average eleven and a half year old this is my dog pork chop oh no here comes roger klotz hey loser i'm running for office so vote for this i know how you must feel now but in a few years when you look back on all this what a loon you never told me your sister was such a weirdo well actually i did try to she's even goofier than you are funny so everything worked out okay these characters were just absolutely beautiful and i got to do doug funny and roger klotz i i got to do their gym coach coach spitz he sounded like this you didn't break anything did you no nothing broken i know there's a reason why certain people talk the way they do they might have brooksism they might have a periodontal malocclusion or the jaw might be getting out say your jaw was like really out and you have to talk through all that stuff to get to your tongue you have to go through the jaw and you got to go through all that space by the time it comes out it's it's all uh spill and so that show lasted for four years on nickelodeon and uh my mom loved that show you know long after it was over with and they did another dug on disney i had nothing to do with it my mom would say too bad you can't get that doug thing going again bunny you were expecting maybe the easter bunny your cartoon you're not real not really if i weren't real could i do this at the time that they were casting for space jam i was still working in new york city on the howard stern show and i was getting ready to leave radio because you know i did my bit for radio for what it's worth but they don't pay anything you know and i just said you know i can't stay here if i stay in the part of the pool where people pee shame on me but ivan reitman the producer was doing howard's movie private parts so he used to sit sit in in the radio studio and watch me doing my thing he set it up where i was gonna audition for bugs it was hairy i mean because you've got to meet so many people's perceptions of what that character is you try to come as close as you can but there's something that no mortal can do is replicate no blanks acting choices you really you're skating on thin ice when you start you know rambling say it was a long monologue or something you know you got to really pay attention all the times to make sure that you're staying in character you know and i used to listen to the court stones and i and i kind of got the pattern and the rhythms and stuff like that like ain't i a little stinker well uh does he say what's up dog like this uh what's up doc nope never heard of him bugs changed every time they had a new director for a cartoon so you know bearing all that in mind i took the plunge and was doing a bugs bunny opposite michael jordan except i was never in the room with him they had a blue screen guy feeding them lines and he'd say oh stop it bugs i wasn't anywhere near so then there was a wrap party at warner brothers for space jam michael jordan's agent uh ken ross sees me and he goes michael this is billy west he did bugs and he reached over like six people and he goes hey billy you know it was like his hand shaking his hand was like that big michael jordan the closest thing to a religious figure that we have and i did elmer fudd you can listen to the cartoons and he's a combination of a child who acts sort of innocently and new to the world like a candide type of character shh be very very quiet i'm hunting wabbit and then he would go oh wait wabbit come out with your hands up i'll bless you all right you pesky wabbit i've got you now and that guy who did his voice was named uh arthur q bryant and he was a radio star and he had these little characters where he would do you know the baby talk they thought he was perfect for elmer fudd because he would just look over and go oh mr bunny rabbit would you come here for a moment please you know and then you go i get you now why for you bury me wiener boy guess who at that point i was just answering the calls for auditions and they said they were gonna redo woody woodpecker and i thought great you know i'll come down and i did my thing and i and i said you guys do know that that's a sped up voice so i tried to do it as approximate as i could guess who and that was the mel blank woody woodpecker after him there was gracie lambs that was walter lanza's wife she goes uh i hope you like today's show you know and they sped it out and if you could hear me sped up that's what it would sound like woody woodpecker that way i couldn't do the laugh in real time it had to be edited because i had to take break breaks for breathing [Music] and then when they added it together and sped it up it was like [Laughter] and i also auditioned for wally walrus oh dot woodpecker i hate you woodpecker that should fix that vote backer you bet and i get to do some a lot of incidental type characters oh yeah i would like to buy a hot dog please i was plenty busy on that show and i loved it i had nothing but energy you know i was younger see him guy so i'm gonna be a delivery boy exactly all right i'm a delivery boy hey it's phil j fry greetings from the year 3000 it still sucks you know what that voice is that was just my um voice when i was 25. i remember what i sounded like i was all whiny and nasally and complainy i was a musician and i'd be like oh man i broke a string now what am i supposed to do you know that's exactly the way i sounded you think somebody would turn the light on that was always bitching and carping and i thought that's the voice i'll do for fry because he is that type of person you know he's not a masher he's a gentleman he's not a very bright gentleman but nonetheless they just said he was um 25 and he was a pizza delivery boy and he winds up in the future and he's still a delivery boy you know going from like the year 2000 i think yeah 1999 to the year 3000 and he's still delivering stuff that was the funny joke there pizza delivery for i see weiner oh crud i always thought by this point in my life i'd be the one making the crank calls i get called into audition and i met them all at this big audition everybody was there i mean i took one look around and i said i'm getting out of here i see ryan styles i see guys like that i see lori petty from tank girl i saw everybody and i just kind of went oh man i don't know ryan stiles will probably mop the floor with that audition and they sat me down and they showed me pictures of the characters and it was like you know this is professor hubert farnsworth and they said what do you think he would sound like and i said he looks like airplane food you know like a diseased piece of chicken stretched around a bone he's 147 years old so he probably farts dust good news everyone bad news that damn time machine alone set me back 15 years if only it did work you could go back and not waste your time on it this character they said what do you think he would sound like and i said well he's got all that cool meat hanging off his face so he specially did it and i kept thinking of two of vladvillian vaudeville before there was television you know the master of ceremonies his name was george jessel and he was a comic and he was an actor and he had jokes like you know you know the definition of a smart ass a fellow that can sit on an ice cream cone and tell you what flavor it is and then there was lou jacoby from the arthur movies where you know he leans into arthur and goes what's it like to have all that money you know so i used the two of them cold fuse them and get zoidberg you know your music is bad and you should feel bad and i and i use the three stooges again as another reference point um that is curly from the three stooges stuff from the 1930s and i'm doing it you know and the scuttling i'd be going and that was from curly going yum yum this is zap brannigan you know starship captain extraordinaire she's a beautiful ship all right i'm gonna fly her brains out dead destroy them let's get a nice feel to it she was like captain kirk if william shatner ran the enterprise and not captain kirk and he always was trying to scoop leela up and fry was like the little jealous suitor that could do nothing but like have anxiety because he couldn't confront seth ranigan it's all that you know the bully gets the girl the bully gets the best piece of cake at lunch in high school you know and uh after all the bullies came in and took all the beautiful pieces of cake there'd be one piece left in the corner with a thumb print in it that's for billy that's for fry futurama everything was bing bing bing bing as the pages dictated having dialogue for four pages four characters that i did were arguing so i was arguing with myself but i would i would do it i mean that i don't know how to do anything else in this world you know what i mean so it's the rewards of a misspent youth hand that very how many times do i have to tell you no shirt no shoes no cat dog i loved going in for cat dog it was so much fun god i was working with tom kenny who is the funniest thing in pants outside of his myriad of vocal ability he's so funny it was always such a joy even if you had the worst day of your life you run into him and you just instantly felt good at least i did the characters that i wound up doing were he's sort of uh an antagonist and he's some kind of a boss you know and he runs a collaboration and he sounds like joe flynn from mchale's navy you know michael one i'm the guy in the taco two keep this place clean my boss sometimes drops in forget the cat food scoob there's a lot better ciao in this kitchen smells great casey kasem was always shaggy like wow but he was an ardent almost rabid vegan one day he just kind of snapped and went come on scoob let's get some scooby snacks some hot dogs hamburgers you know and he goes why does it always have to be meat i don't want to talk about eating hot dogs you know i mean he was adamant and so he was unenthused and they had to find somebody else so they brought me in there and i was just trying to do my best to sound like the character that he that he created try to stay true to what was done you add a little something of your own in there wallpaper you know if you're if you're doing a carbon copy imitation there's something soulless about it so you've got to bring something of yourself to it to make it seem real traveling with any baggage yeah here he comes now hey what are you looking at he's looking at my peanut i feel so violated this is the red eminem and i've been the voice of the red eminem who could believe for 25 or 26 years and he's just like a wise-ass version of me well think of me as sort of a candy-coated leonardo dicaprio originally doing the m ms was um john lovitz from saturday night live and john goodman played yellow some nonsense went down and they were recasting and i got to play the red m m and the yellow m m do you remember the show the prison show oz one time uh when i was married i i came home and my wife said come here come here sit down and she's pointing at the tv and she goes have you seen the show what's this guy he is the real deal he ain't no actor he's the real deal and uh this character was like neo-nazi white supremacist just pure evil and i said what i know him you do you know and i said yeah he's the yellow eminem and he's one of the best actors period ever jk simmons and then he does the commercials for uh is a state farm seen it covered it the notre dame cathedral fire he won an oscar for the movie whiplash you know and this guy is a phenom and i've always looked up to him and respected him he just surprises me and his roles how did this happen it's like the david burns song you know you might find yourself working with an oscar-winning actor and my god how do i work this oh we can spout crazy theories all day but science suggests a more logical explanation that bean is possessed by a demon disenchantment matt greening's latest show i got a few parts that i'm doing on there but one of them was this court magician sort of doctor slash slash everything he's kind of like uh grizzled and he wears a little you know wizard coat and a little hat sometimes oh come in come in make yourself comfortable on the dissection table there was an actor that i used to love named jonathan harris and he was on loss in space he played dr smith who was the villain oh dear william i can't breathe please open every no you know you know we're in the middle of the galaxy dr smith you know oh dear good here i just loved him and i actually got to work with him and i met him and i i was all over him i wanted to know every single thing about this guy he told me the best stories of hollywood that i ever heard in my life because he was there since the 50s and he was doing plays stage plays before that with like english divas and then he said i'll tell you a secret billy he goes i was at these dems and does guy from brooklyn and he changed his accent to make him seem almost regal or or elevated in society and people gave him more respect and he said so i stuck with it and he was perfect so this cercerio is a kind of my tribute to jonathan harris but he's sort of villainous because he's got this like love-hate relationship with everybody you know sometimes i think he'd rather see them dead and then you know the next minute hello dear friend oh dear when i was a little kid i would start just inventing my own little planet my own little universe where i you know that would welcome me and these things would come out of me and i realized that i had a superpower i loved comic books i loved all these things and all of a sudden junk would shoot out of me out of nowhere full grown men's voice women's kids voices all roads were pointing to voice work i guess the closest to anything i could get that i i really like doing is cry because there's so much of me in that character i felt like i was a loser and no matter how hard i tried over the years and then you become an adult and cut through all that scar tissue from your youth i feel that he has an introspect that is sort of like mine and so i inject that you know how he's making a decision on a moral dilemma on the other hand if i do this i'd see the script and i could just watch the movie and i could just hear how it would be said in my head so there's a nod to my past way past when i was 25 once thanks vanity fair uh this has been the uh timeline of my career and i hope it inspired people i hope it made you laugh i hope it made you happy in times of darkness because i was always looking for stuff like that and there's a final boy goodbye

Channel: Vanity Fair

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Id: Ua2x461oNy0

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020